The rising corporate scandals caused by unethical accountants have concerned various parties, especially the stakeholders. These scandals, whether in public or private sectors, will impact the economy and reputation of a country. Therefore, the role of ethical accountants in providing reliable information for decision-making is a very crucial and should be addressed seriously. Thus, the education sector is believed to be one of the ways to produce graduates with good technical skills, knowledge, and high morality to make the best judgement for society. The research is conducted to assess the influence of accounting ethics education (ethics courses and teaching styles) on the ethical behaviour of accounting graduates in Malaysia. This study uses questionnaire which distributed to accounting graduates from MIA-accredited universities. 70 usable responses were received and PLS-SEM is used to analyse the data. This study found that teaching styles used in teaching ethics courses have a positive and significant relationship on the ethical behaviour of accounting graduates in Malaysia. However, ethics courses offered in the accounting program at the university was found not be significant. thus, it is suggested that lecturers need to use various methods of teaching in delivering ethics courses to enhance the ethical behaviour of accounting graduates in Malaysia.

One of communication mechanism that used by corporations to state their focus, concerns and activities is corporate reports, such as annual report and stand-alone sustainability report. On top of mandatory reporting of financial statements, corporations use corporate reports to convey their philosophy, construct visibility and image. Integrated Reporting (IR) and Sustainability Reporting are two recent reporting frameworks that have been adopted by corporations. The corporations’ value creation process is the main focus of IR, which is based on six capitals of corporations. Sustainability Reporting is a way for a corporation to become more sustainable and focuses on economic, environmental and social aspects. The main objective of this study is to compare the two-reporting frameworks. Particularly, the suitability of the reporting frameworks for halal industry players to communicate their halal commitment and activities. This study also examined whether ESG and Halal practices can be converged based on the reporting framework. This study provides an analysis of corporate reports of a leading halal food manufacturer that is listed in Bursa Malaysia. Based on content analysis, this study highlights halal-related information in the company’s IR and Sustainability Reporting. Results from the study might provide evidence on non-financial reporting that may acts as a communication tool to the stakeholders. UtilizingIR and Sustainability reporting could build trust of capital market and society, thus ensure the sustainability of halal industry.

The purposes of study are to examine the effect of audit committee characteristics namely gender, frequency of meetings, independence member in audit committee and audit committee size on audit quality and the moderating role of internal audit function in the relationship between audit committee characteristics and audit quality. The objective is to contribute to the new evidence on the role of audit committee characteristics plays towards the audit quality with internal audit function as moderator. This research applied a quantitative approach and secondary data as the main source of information for analysis. Stratified random sampling techniques are being used in this study. Further, the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach via SmartPLS was utilized to achieve the research purpose by evaluating the data collected from 250 public listed companies in Malaysia. The results reveal that only three of the audit committee characteristics, namely presence of female members in the audit committee, frequency of meetings and independence of directors, are positively influencing the audit quality for listed companies in Malaysia. Surprisingly, this study also found that internal audit function did not play the moderating effect in the relationship between audit committee characteristics and audit quality. The findings will facilitate researchers and scholars to enhance the understanding of audit committee characteristics particularly the gender, frequency of AC meetings and independence members in the audit committee played in improving overall audit quality. The companies’ stakeholders like professional accountancy body and governments may use the outcomes from this research study to improve existing rules and government regulations and code of conducts of its members to improve the quality of their works. This study contributes to the relatively new discussion on the effect of audit committee characteristics on audit quality by adding internal audit function as a moderator in Malaysia. The outcome from this study may assist the companies’ stakeholders like professional accountancy body and governments in determining improved methods to enhance audit committee characteristics in improving audit quality.

Integrity refers to the qualities that exist in everyone based on the and high moral practices. Therefore, youth as the catalyst of the nation, need to be ethical in their actions and make ethical values as a culture in their daily lives. Recognizing the importance of integrity, this study is expected to help the public sector mainly in pahang plan strategies to instill the culture of integrity among youth. Thus, the main objective of this study is to identify the factors that influence the intention to commit unethical behavior among youth in Pahang. The objective of the study is to examine whether attitudes (love of money and greed), subjective norms (parental influence and peer influence) and perceived behavioral control (financial stress and capability) and religiosity will have a relationship with Intention to commit unethical behaviour . The study was conducted using a survey. A total of 148 respondents who are youths between the ages of 18 to 40 who work in government agencies participated the results of this study revealed that religiosity shows a significant and negative relationship with intention to commit unethical behaviour.​​ This study adds to the body of knowledge about intention to commit unethical behavior. It is intended that this study would improve awareness of youth in ensuring that they are able to perform their duties with integrity.

State Islamic Religious Council (SIRCs) in Malaysia were established for the social welfare under the purview of state enactments in an Islamic setting. Despite the absence of a profit motive, accountability must be upheld as it is set up to be the guardian of resources so that the trust of stakeholders could be obtained. SIRCs are expected to uphold their ethics and values in their overall operations. However, a number of negative cases of SIRCs were reported in the local media which has tarnished the image of SIRCs. Thus governors of SIRCs should managed their human assets well. Human governance is the governors’ commitment to improve employees’ values and ethical behavior in the organization through their leadership, integrity fostered in the organization, training that the governors’ attended and internal control that has been put in place. The objective of the study is to examine whether Human Governance Index (HG INDEX) could be applied to SIRCs. HG INDEX comprise of 4 components which are (i) BOD Leadership, (ii) Level of Integrity Index, (iii) BOD Quantity of Training Index, and (iv) Quality of Internal Control System Index . Thirteen(13), 2019 annual reports of SIRCs were used as a basis for data collection. Based on the findings, Quality of Internal control and Level of Integrity were found to be the highest disclosed index. Overall, HG index was found to be low for SIRCs. Thus Governors of SIRCs can use the findings of the study to increase their transparency and accountability to stakeholders by focusing on HG in order to gain the public trust.

The process of deciding what is right or wrong in a particular scenario is known as moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is important as it will help to shape an individual’s intention whether to perform or not to perform an unethical behaviour. This study will examine the level of moral reasoning of lecturers in public universities of Malaysia and examine its relationship to intention to perform unethical behaviour. The Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2) via N2 scores was used to measure the level of moral reasoning of lecturers. Intention to perform unethical behaviour was measured using ethical dilemmas scenarios. Online survey was sent to 30 lecturers of the Faculty of Business/ Management from 20 public universities. 130 responses were received, and data collected was sent to the Centre for the Study of Ethical Development University of Alabama for reliability test, scoring and analysis, as it is copyrighted. Only 83 responses passed the DIT2 reliability test and was then used for further analysis. The result shows that the N2 score of lecturers is at the low level of 23.39 which falls in Kohlberg’s Cognitive Moral Development stage 2 and 3 representing the personal interest schema. The study also found that moral reasoning of lecturers does not affect their intention to perform unethical behaviour. This could be because the level of moral reasoning of lecturers are at a low level and thus do not affect intention to perform unethical behaviour. Thus, efforts should be taken to develop the moral reasoning to a higher level such as exposing them to ethics courses and ethics training program that can increase their cognitive moral development to a higher level so that they do not only focus on self but also on law, social order and universal ethical principles.

Purpose – The study examines the relationship between nonaudit services (NAS) and accruals quality in Malaysia. The study also considers several important characteristics of audit committee as the determinant for accruals quality. Next, the study examines whether these characteristics mitigate the relationship between NAS and accruals quality. Design/methodology/approach – The study employs descriptive analysis, univariate tests and multivariate regression to investigate the potential effect of NAS on acruals quality. Data for audit committee characteristics were hand collected from annual reports downloaded from Bursa Malaysia’s website. Findings – Based on 1,118 firm-year observations for the period 2009–2011, the study finds that NAS negatively impact accruals quality. This empirical result indicates that the economic bond that is created between auditors and clients restricts the auditors from performing their duty objectively. A fully independent audit committee weakens the negative relationship between NAS and auditor independence. Research limitations/implications – The sample period represents a limitation since it only covers three years of data. This limitation is largely driven by the nature of data collection of NAS fees. Practical implications – These results contribute to Malaysia’s policy deliberation to account for the effects of NAS on auditor independence and the oversight role of an audit committee. This study contributes to theoretical perspectives on accruals quality and corporate governance in Malaysia. Originality/value – The novelty of this research, coupled with institutional data in Malaysia, claims the originality of this research.

Shariah companies need to maintain good performance to ensure the sustainability of companies. Shariah companies operate based on Islamic moral foundations, specifically in terms of their accountability and transparency which are considered as key values that need to be considered when conducting their business operations. However, corruption cases can affect the performance of Shariah companies. Studies have shown that Shariah-compliant companies are underperforming as compared to their conventional counterparts. Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine whether BOD ethical commitment (corporate ethics values, action to promote ethics, code of ethics and whistleblowing policy) and risk management and internal control system (content, implementation, role, objective, framework and separation section) will affect the performance of Shariah companies. Data was collected from the 2019 annual reports of 60 Shariah manufacturing companies. Data was analysed using Smart Partial Least Square. The study found BOD Ethical Commitment (whistleblowing policy) and Risk Management and Internal Control System (separation of risk management and internal control) have a significant relationship with performance. The study implies that shariah-compliant companies should focus on the disclosure of whistleblowing policy and separation of risk management and internal control system in their annual reports for them to improve their performance as disclosure of this information, will help to improve the confidence of the market to invest in them

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between Islamic corporate governance (ICG), human governance (HG), and information technology (IT) usage on sustainability reporting (SR) by investigating Shariah compliant companies in Malaysia and Indonesia. Data was collected from 68 manufacturing Shariah compliant companies’ annual reports for Malaysia, and 70 manufacturing Shariah compliant companies’ annual reports for Indonesia, for the year ended 2019. Descriptive and multiple regression analysis was used to analyse the data. The study found that HG Index and IT Usage Index were positive and significantly related to sustainability reporting for Shariah companies in both countries. However, ICG was not found to be significantly related to sustainability reporting for Shariah companies in Malaysia and Indonesia. This could be because the study focuses only on manufacturing companies, and in Malaysia and Indonesia, only about 24% of the companies and 13% of the companies respectively, have an ICG structure in place. The study suggests that to increase SR of Shariah compliant companies, there should be a good HG structure in place, and they should increase their level of IT usage in their business operations. Resource-Based theory can explain the relationship of IT Usage and HG to SR.

In developing countries, particularly South Asia, there is scarce research on corporate governance and sustainability reporting disclosure. This study considers several insightful theories, including Stakeholder Theory, Agency Theory, and the TOE Framework, to understand the relationships and drivers of sustainability reporting. The study examines Indonesian Islamic corporates using data from the ISSI (Indonesia Shariah Stock Index). We gathered annual reports and sustainability reports from the ISSI database for the year 2019. The study investigates how human governance (HG), Islamic corporate governance (ICG), and information technology usage (ITU) are related to sustainability reporting disclosure (SR). The findings showed that the sustainability reporting disclosure was significantly influenced by human governance and Islamic corporate governance with firm size and leverage. Furthermore, the research showed that profitability was not significantly related to sustainability reporting disclosure, that Islamic corporate governance had a significant negative influence on SR, and that IT usage was only significant when human governance was not present. Finally, the results showed that human governance is the main driver of sustainability reporting disclosure. Therefore, we conclude that human governance is the best predictor for sustainability reporting disclosure.